Field of the Invention
The invention discussed herein are related to a microscope device and a microscope system, and more particularly, to a microscope device and a microscope system that capture an image of a specimen illuminated laterally with illumination light in the form of a sheet (hereinafter, also a light sheet).
Description of the Related Art
In the field of fluorescence microscopes, a confocal microscope is well known as a means for generating three-dimensional information of a specimen, and in recent years, a microscope that adopts light sheet illumination that illuminates a specimen laterally with a light sheet (hereinafter, also referred to as a light-sheet microscope) is also known.
Examples of a light-sheet microscope are an SPIM (Selective Plane Illumination Microscope), a DSLM (Digital Scanned Light-sheet Microscope), etc. Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2006-509246 has disclosed an SPIM that forms illumination light in the form of a sheet by means of a cylindrical lens as an above-described light-sheet microscope.
A light-sheet microscope features less fading and phototoxicity than in the case of a confocal fluorescence microscope. Further, in a confocal fluorescence microscope, if the NA (Numerical Aperture) becomes small during observation, longitudinal resolving power (Z resolving power) deteriorates remarkably compared to transverse resolving power (XY resolving power) as illustrated in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. Because of this, there may be a case where a sufficiently high longitudinal resolving power cannot be obtained, particularly in macroscopic observation. In contrast to this, in a light-sheet microscope, the longitudinal resolving power is determined by the thickness of illumination in the form of a sheet (i.e., the width in the Z direction), and therefore, it is possible to obtain a sufficiently high longitudinal resolving power even in macroscopic observation.